Finally, after a four year wait, Zoo Tycoon has gone portable. While I hate to rain on anyone's parade, you may want to stop yourself from rushing off to the store until you finish reading this review.

This game is bad. It's not painfully bad, but it will bore you into hatred.

Zoo Tycoon's features include situational play, free play, and card viewing. Yup. That's it.

Since the game refused to be even remotely entertaining, the rest of this review will be in the form of a dialog between hope and reality so I can say I got some enjoyment out it.

HOPE: You say that the game is dull, but there's got to be so much depth in the game! It's a sim, after all!

REALITY: No. This is the baby pool of sim games. The challenges are simple to meet: build your zoo to specifications while on pause; unpause and let the game take its course; pause and meet any other time-based requirements if necessary (only on the harder levels); unpause and wait an interminably long time until you win. If you get bored, you can do some simple R&D projects and develop more animal toys or attractions, but that's about it. You don't even have control over pricing anything but the actual zoo admission fee.

HOPE: But the rewards for winning must be so sweet!

REALITY: Wrong again. All you get for meeting the weak sauce challenges are more obnoxious challenges.

HOPE: The game looked really nice on the PC;; on the DS hardware, it must be gorgeous!

REALITY: These are the ugliest graphics you'll find on the DS to date. The sprites are poorly animated, ugly, and washed out. Trying to decipher what is an anteater from a rhino, or a leopard from a tiger requires selecting the animal in question or memorizing exactly what you put in a particular spot. It's games like this that make me wonder why more pharmaceutical companies don't invest in in-game advertising. This game could sell buckets of Tylenol.

HOPE: I can just imagine how excellent it would be to use the stylus to build the zoo, so much more intuitive than using a mouse, since you could build by touching the map grid.

REALITY: That's half right. The game allows you to alter terrain and fences using the stylus on a map grid. The problem is that the grid provided on the touch screen is damn near incomprehensible. Essentially, you have to aim a too-large grid over an area in your zoo, using the d-pad, and match it with the grid on the bottom screen.

And while choosing from the menu is all done by touch screen, implementing any other changes to your zoo is done using the A and B buttons. So basically, you'll end up switching back and forth constantly from the stylus to the buttons because the interface is so poor.

HOPE: Well, what about the sound?

REALITY: Let's just say this game takes advantage of the fact that the DS has speakers. Minimal advantage. There are sounds in the game, but good luck figuring out what exactly it is you're hearing. I couldn't tell if the sandpaper sound I heard so often was my fountain or some animal frolicking in the grass.

HOPE: And the card collecting? That sounds fun! Like Pokemon!

REALITY: You can purchase animal cards while playing a scenario. If (okay, when ) you win, you get to keep those cards for your viewing pleasure at the menu screen. The cards are informative but lackluster, and collecting them isn't particularly exciting since it's such an easy accomplishment.

HOPE: Is there anything about the game you can recommend?

REALITY: Absolutely. Turning it off.

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